Styrofoam Throne (5 page)

The lights came back on and I cupped my hands around my eyes and leaned into the mirror. It was a plastic windowpane that separated me from an identical room on the other side, creating the illusion that I had no reflection. I thought it was a cool trick and wondered what other dark fortunes you could get. As I studied the untouched, cleaner version of the room I was in, an actor dressed as a rotting skeleton popped up in front of the mirror from below.

“Ahhhh!” We both screamed at the same time but for different reasons. The skeleton pointed at me as he lowered himself back down behind the mirror.

It fed my excitement to keep moving through rooms. I needed more so I could keep the horror high going. Many of the longer room-to-room transitions in the Castle were in pure blackness. You just had to learn there was a winding staircase by tripping over it. Long hallways of nothingness led you face first into a wall. I climbed another flight of dark stairs and opened a door, revealing the roof of the Castle and a catwalk to another door back inside.

On the catwalk, I could see the whole town on the land side and the beach on the other. People played in the ocean and laid out on the sand. I turned around and looked for my house. I saw the flagpole a couple blocks from where we lived and guesstimated the distance to my house. Looking down at the treetops of my home, I never imagined the Castle could provide such a perspective.

A scared group of girls ran into me.

“Get out of the way!” they yelled.

“Hey, that’s my house,” I pointed out to one of the girls.

“Ew,” she said as they left the catwalk. I heard them screaming immediately on the other side of the door and smiled.

I spent more time on the roof of the Castle than I had in any room before it. The sound of the ocean mixed with the “Toccata” provided the perfect horror fan’s relaxation. The beach never looked so cool and the town never looked so small.

After a few minutes, I opened the next door inside and was engulfed in darkness as my eyes readjusted. I made my way through more rooms and crept around cautiously. I came into an old tavern set where a guy dressed as Satan poured drinks for mannequin monsters.

“Do you believe in God?” Satan said, grinning in a demonic voice.

“Why?”

“Do you. Believe. In. God?”

“Wha. Aye,” I said in syllables that didn’t exist.

“Yes or no. A simple question for a simple human.”

“I dunno.”

“When you die, where are you going?”

“Never thought about it,” I lied.

“So you really don’t believe in God?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘God.’”

Satan dropped the schtick.

“Jesus, kid. You’re fuckin’ blowing it. You’re supposed to say, ‘Yes,’ and then I say, ‘Well you’re in the wrong place.’ For fuck’s sake.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

“Get the fuck outta here,” Satan said, nodding me out of the tavern.

At the Castle’s end, I got chased down the exit hallway by a mad butcher yelling, “Please stay for dinner! You’re the main course!” Immediately, I wanted to turn back and start it all over again. In triumph, I threw the exit doors open and stumbled into blinding daylight. Out on the pier, I squinted and rubbed my eyes to readjust. The Castle felt like one blurry, fast-forward tour of a lo-fi hell, peppered with cheesy puns (“Fangs for stopping by!”). No matter how many times I had fantasized about what lay beyond its iron gates, I couldn’t have imagined it would’ve been this rad.

As my pupils dilated in the sun, I spotted the dudes whose quarters I’d stolen. They were harassing some kids about whether they’d seen “a tall fuck-face.” Before I could hide, they had picked up on my beaming smile coming out the back gates where others usually scream.

“Motherfucker!” the blond dude yelled.

“There he is!”

The two dudes leapt into action and charged at me as I took off running.

“You can’t out-run me!” said the blond, tearing off his jacket to reveal a track and field shirt. I ran out in front of the Castle and down to the beach, hoping to lose him under the pier. But I didn’t account for the dry sand. It slowed me down and drained my energy while the runner closed in.

“You are dead! I’m gonna get you!” he yelled, accelerating his pace.

In the slow traction of the sand, I started to realize this might be true. After surviving the horrors of Castle Dunes, I was about to lose my life to something far more boring. Blondie was so close behind me that I could hear his runner’s scientific huff and puff. I booked it as best I could to the stretch of beach where the cement fire pits began as I came to grips with the fact that I wouldn’t win this race. When the dude went to grasp my shirt, I dropped to the ground and curled into a human speed bump. The dude didn’t have a second to react. He tripped over me, just as I’d planned it. But it sent him flying face first onto the cement edge of a fire pit, as I hadn’t planned it. You could hear the bone crunch over the “Toccata.”

“Arrrrgggghhhh!”

I looked up and saw Blondie’s bloody face rise from the pit and fall back down.

“Oh shit,” I said.

Blood was streaming from his nostrils and a couple teeth were missing.

I stood up and just stared at him.

“Get . . . help . . .” he said.

The stocky friend caught up to us and ran over to the pile of his friend. He looked from Blondie to me, back and forth, as I got ready to accept the blow of vengeance.

“You’re fucking crazy, man.” He took caution to stay away from me and circled the fire pit from the other way around.

“Holy shit, dude. Are you okay?” he asked his friend.

“No . . . . Find my tooth . . . teeth. And . . . kick his ass.” The guy was gonna live but his summer of catching chicks was over.

“What should I do first?”

“Kill him!”

The stocky guy turned to me.

“Let’s go, motherfucker!”

He pushed me to the sand. I was now at eye-level with the blond, whose face looked worse than anything I just saw in the Castle. It was too real. Too detailed.

“You’re gonna pay for that shit, bad,” his friend said.

I looked up at the stocky attacker and braced myself until the suspense was broken by a voice.

“Hey, fuckers!” a voice yelled from behind us.

I watched as the stocky guy turned around and got a one-two combination of having soda poured on his head and getting knocked out with one punch. The guy collapsed, revealing a Mexican-looking metalhead about the same age as me, outfitted with long hair, a patch-covered denim vest, and denim shorts. No shirt. He was smoking a joint and had one checkered slip-on shoe and one black one.

His swing had immediately taken this dude down. I wondered how a lightweight guy like this could take out a bigger one so easily. Then I noticed the sun gleam off his right hand. Brass knuckles.

The metalhead reached a hand out to help me up.

“Hey, bro, I’m Renaldo.”

“Hey. Donovan. Thanks for the help.”

“No problem, bro. I got all your guys’ backs at the Castle, man—it’s a war zone in there. Were they pissed you scared them or what?”

“Oh, I don’t work there. I just went through it.”

“Ah, you’re a plebe.” He pronounced it “pleeb.”

“Huh?”

“You just said you went through the Castle, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a plebe. The people who go through the Castle. It’s what they call ’em, anyway.”

“Who?”

“The monsters ’n shit.”

“Oh.”

“Well, you look like you work there,” Renaldo said.

This time I took it as a compliment.
 

“So what’d you do, then?”

“Uh, I kinda stole their quarters from the arcade so I could go through the Castle.”

“Ha! Whatever, man. Fuck jocks! Heavy metal for life.”

“Yeah . . .” After saving me, he could have said, “Smooth jazz for life,” and I would have agreed.

“So how was the Castle?”

“I want to live there.”

“Rad. First time?”

“Yeah. Have you been?”

“Fuckin’ hell yeah, I have, man! Tons of times. Not yet this summer though. I’m waiting for a fully staffed Saturday night so I can get all fucked up and grab some ass! In the dark, dude, it’s heaven. You should come, bro.”

Invitations were rare for me.

“That’d be cool but I don’t have any money. Like, ever.”

“Man, come with me and I’ll show you how to make money all day.”
 

Renaldo and I walked under the pier to the other side of the beach.

“Check it out, employee entrance,” he said.

I thought I knew every detail of the Castle’s exterior but I had never noticed this side ramp alongside the pier, or even thought about where the Castle monsters punch in.

“So check this out, man. One of the rules for people that work at the Castle is that they are not allowed to walk around the pier in costume, so on their breaks they come out here on the side, smoke ciggies ’n shit, and have us do food runs for ’em. And, dude, they let you keep the change. That’s the deal!”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah and it adds up. Look at me!”

“What do you mean?”

“Dude, all my patches, right?! I got ’em by getting Cokes and nachos for the monsters!”

“Oh, cool, how much do they cost?”

“Well, I use the money to buy three darts for a dollar on the pier and then if my dart hits the balloon, I score a patch. Usually, I do—unless it’s the end of the night, and there’s, like, four balloons left on the wall. Or I’m drunk. That’s why I like to play in the morning.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Patch! Patch! Patch!”

“What if you just bought them?”

“Dude, you can’t buy ’em. You have to win ’em. Get it? Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

We walked up the ramp where four picnic tables were. A zombie druid sat on one, smoking a cigarette, while three witches chatted away at another. A couple kids not affiliated with the Castle stood around the perimeter, watching their every move.
 

I recognized one of the witches. She worked in the dungeon, and when I had walked in the room, she said I was cute before heading in on some rhyming witches’ incantation. Being called cute was more terrifying than the incantation for me. But now here she was, eating a churro and talking to a friend about how she wanted to “slay” some dude tonight.

Renaldo pushed his way past the ogling kids and addressed the employees on break.

“’Sup, everybody, this is Donovan. He’s now available for any food runs this summer. Need anything?”

The zombie druid said, “I’ll take a churro.” It was a different voice than I’d heard in the Castle. Gone was the demonic rasp, and in its place was a dopey drawl. It was moody, but not in the haunted Castle sense—moody like a teenager who was denied a seat at the witches’ table.

“Okay, cool,” I said.

“Here’s two bucks.”

The druid handed me the money. I looked to Renaldo, who nodded in approval.

“You witches need any shit?” Renaldo asked.

They shook their heads.

“Cool, we’ll be back.”

“Better,” said the druid.

Renaldo led me up to the pier.

“Dude, churros are a total score! You got a good one.”

“Right on.”

We walked up to the churro stand and Renaldo pointed at the menu.

“Buck twenty-five, dude. See what I mean?”

“Uh, no.”

“Dude, you can make seventy-five cents on this if he gives you the change! This is way better than getting a nacho order, ‘cause that shit is a dollar ninety-five. Five cents sucks! So, you hope they get a Coke or something to get away from the nineties or eighties shit.”

“Like, offset the math.”

“Huh?”

“Like it’s ‘Wheel of Fortune’ but in the other direction.”

“Sure, dude.”

I returned with the churro.

“Here ya go. And seventy-five cents.”

“Keep it,” the druid said.

“Thanks.”

One of the witches piped up.

“Hey, I want one of those.”

“Nice.”

I took the money from the witch and walked back to the churro stand with Renaldo. He was going on about how successful he’d been at the operation. This guy just saved me from getting my ass kicked, dropped a dude in one punch, and then rooted me in the underground economy of Castle Dunes. Within minutes, he’d basically saved my life twice. Renaldo shared his secret knowledge of a private kingdom and asked nothing in return. I didn’t know how I could ever repay him.

“Dude, aren’t you worried about the competition? You know, another guy thinning out the tips?” I said.

“Nah, dude. I sell weed too.”

From afternoon until closing at midnight, I did food runs for the zombies, witches, and assorted ghouls. During the day, I watched monsters rub their eyes and eat ice cream. As the night went on, their appetites changed. Instead of snacks and soda, they repurposed their cups, passed around a bottle, and smoked Renaldo’s weed.

During a slow patch toward the end, I went out on the pier to look at the Castle at night. High school football field–style lights were rigged up around the perimeter of the Castle to show it off. I stared at the full-moon glow of the three pole-mounted grids and noticed clouds of insects swarming around the lights. The dense, frantic swarm was occasionally penetrated by dive-bombing bats looking for dinner. The real bats came from all around but most of them lived under the pier during the day. They added to the authenticity of the Castle Dunes experience, but the bat shit everywhere did not. Eventually, the grid lights shut off for the night and the swarm scattered.

Renaldo came up to me.

“See ya tomorrow?” he asked.

“If I’m still alive,” I said.

“What’s up?”

“I think I’ve got trouble waiting at home. Mom shit.”

“Yeah, I hear that,” Renaldo said.

“I don’t know, man.”

“Dude, whenever I think my dad is going to kick my ass, I just go kick my own ass first.”

“You kick your own ass?”

“Pretty much. If I’m really drunk, I can take a blow to the face. But if not, I’ll just do some insane skate move that I know won’t end up good.”

“Dude.”

“Then when I walk in the door, he’s like, ‘Who kicked your ass? I’ll buy ’em a drink.’ Or ‘Who kicked your ass? Tell ’em thanks.’ Or ‘This one’s for them,’ and he takes a slug. Or ‘Call me next time so I can watch.’”